Hello there! Welcome to the world of pokémon! My name is Oak!
People call me the pokémon Prof! This world is inhabited by creatures called
pokémon! For some people, pokémon are pets. Others use them for fights.
Myself...I study pokémon as a profession.
--Professor Oak, Pokémon red version.

[1] Pokémonshort for pocket monstersis
the name of a game (really several) involving creatures called pokémon
and trainers. Within the narrative of the game, the pokémon
trainer catches pokémon in little holding containers (called pokeballs),
and then uses those pokémon to fight other pokémon. On its
surface, the fights have two reasons: 1) to weaken and capture wild pokémon,
and 2) to defeat other pokémon trainers. The pokémon themselves
are various, having different appearances, names, powers, potentials, weaknesses,
and personalities. The actual form of the game, again, on its surface, takes
several forms: 1) the card game, 2) the Gameboy versions, 3) the Nintendo
64 version, 4) the cartoons and movies, and 5) the various toys, merchandise,
and artifacts. How these various aspects figure in this discussion of play
is the subject of this paper, and thus further elaboration is available
in following sections.

[2] Any good trainer knows that you can't learn unless you
play the game. Being a good trainer is a long and complicated process which
involves working with the pokémon you have in order to accumulate
experience and catch more pokémon. The more one loses oneself in
the pursuit of pokémon, the greater the rewards. Pokémon evolve,
they grow stronger, and thus lead the trainer to greater captures and greater
pursuits. And this is why I have chosen to build my paper as a hypertext.
For me, as a writer, the circuitous path through Deleuze and Guattari's
A Thousand Plateaus has left me no alternative but to move myself
through the material in a similar fashion. How can I move through the menagerie
of concepts in an orderly fashion, and to what end? Why seek stasis in an
always changing game? Instead, I have arranged ideas in any order, because
there is no order, only movement through smooth space. This is only a game
with no object but to move the reader.

[3] Throughout this adventure, I have been forced to adopt
a number of conventions in order to facilitate play. First of all, I use
the term pokémon to discuss the creatures, or objects
of capture. I use the italicized Pokémon to discuss
the specifically named products (ie. the cartoons, movies, card games, video
games, etc.). And finally, I use the underlined Pokémon
to discuss the world of ideas within which the pokémon and Pokémon
discussions are situated. The terms trainer and player
are used interchangeably, but it should be understood that the trainer
function is, in some situations, a subcategory of the player.
In other words, the player must be a trainer in
order to play well. A third term, the collector is meant to
distinguish between the various functions of players and trainerssometimes
the trainer collects pokémon as a part of the trainer
function, sometimes the player collects pokémon (or Pokémon)
for reasons outside of his/her role as trainer. But it also
important to remember, that within the context of play, these distinctions
collapse in various arrangements.

[4] Throughout the paper itself, there are a number of formal
features which will facilitate misreading. Links provided throughout the
body of the text offer definitions, which can be ignored, but offer assistance
on what may be unfamiliar terms or counterintuitive uses of those terms.
Endnotes provide supplementary or extraneous information. Certain themes
that are discussed in each of the paper's sections feature links in the
margins which will allow the reader to travel sideways by switching pokémon,
and thus shifting into another discussion, tangentially related to the previous,
but no more significant. The goal is to travel through the pool of effects
and abilities, and if you find that your pokémon have exhausted themselves,
then you may proceed to the pokémon center where they
will be taken care of by nurse Joy. To begin play, choose a pokémon
from the pokeballs below: Charmander, Pikachu, or Squirtle. Feel free to
switch pokémon at any time. Good luck!